Chapter NINE: Charged with Arson

No one was less surprised than Sandy Steele when the order came for him and Jerry James to report to Captain West in his cabin.

It was by then close to midnight. Once the fire had been put out, there had remained the task of clearing away the debris and cleaning up. This had occupied the crew for a few more hours, and Sandy and Jerry had not been happy to hear the grumbles about burned suppers and lost sleep or to see the glances of hostility that were directed their way. Mr. Briggs, it seemed, had been as expert in spreading his falsehoods among the crew as he had been in taking them to Captain West.

Only Sam had remained friendly, and it had been Sam who had brought the order.

“Captain says you two are to report to him right away,” Sam said. He shook his head sadly. “Too bad, boys,” he went on. “If I can read storm signals right, I’d say you were in for it.”

“In for it!” Jerry burst out hotly. “Is that what we get for putting out the fire?”

“Hold it, Jerry,” Sandy said gently, calming his friend down. “That won’t do any good.” He looked at Sam. “I suppose Mr. Briggs is with him?”

Sam seemed surprised. “Now, how do you know that?”

Sandy’s answer was a grim tightening of his lips. On the subject of Mr. Briggs, he did not trust himself to speak. Sandy wondered how much longer he was going to be able to control his temper. It seemed to him that every time either he or Jerry did something they were supposed to do, even something they really needn’t have done, their only reward was some penalty or a leer from Mr. Briggs or an insult from the skipper. What had begun as a high school boy’s dream of a splendid way to spend the summer seemed to be turning into a nightmare. Sandy let out his breath in a deep sigh. He looked at Jerry and was startled to see the sulky expression on his friend’s normally cheerful countenance.

“I’m not going,” Jerry said sullenly.

“Wha-a-at?” Sam said, as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “What did you say, young fellow?”

Before Jerry could reply, Sandy had propelled him up the passageway and out of earshot. He didn’t want their friend Sam to get the notion that they were mutinous.

“Jerry,” he whispered fiercely, “you’ve got to stop talking like that!”

“I don’t care!” Jerry said stoutly. “We’ve been pushed around long enough, and now I’ve got to get it off my chest. Listen, Sandy—you know very well what’s going to happen when we get in there with the captain. He’s going to accuse us with a lot of lies that he’s heard from the mate. He’ll not only forget that we risked our lives to get at that table, but he’ll turn around and say we started the fire.”

“Shhh!” Sandy said, looking around anxiously.

Jerry lowered his voice, but he didn’t stop talking. “It’s true! Why, look what he said to you after you rescued poor old Cookie from drowning! He acted as though you’d jumped in just to make him late for the Soo Locks. Honestly, Sandy, I don’t know why you bother—”

“Because we’ve got to!” Sandy insisted, squeezing Jerry’s arm. “Don’t you realize that a captain aboard ship is a lot different from a teacher or a football coach? He’s got you in his power, Jerry. His word is law! Really. You can’t disobey him!”

“Oh, no?” Jerry said.

“If you do,” Sandy warned, “you’ll wind up in jail. I mean it, Jerry. Now is just the time when we’ve got to keep our heads.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. Then he went on: “Captain West must know by now that we’ve found out about him. You remember that Mr. Briggs was out in the passageway, eavesdropping, while we were talking about it. He’s certainly told the skipper. Now, with the fire, he’s got an excuse to do something that will keep us from warning Mr. Kennedy.”

Jerry’s eyes widened. “Such as what?” he asked. “Such as locking us up somewhere.”

There was a momentary silence, and then Jerry James groaned and said, “Boy, oh, boy, we really _are_ in trouble, aren’t we?”

Sandy smiled in relief. He could tell by the tone of his friend’s voice that he had gotten over his resentment. With a reassuring squeeze of Jerry’s arm, Sandy continued, “We are. That’s why we’ve got to stay calm. So, whatever you do, Jerry, don’t say or do anything foolish when we get in there with Captain West.”

Jerry James’s jaw tightened and he clapped his friend on the arm. “Right,” he said, and then the two of them walked up the passageway and knocked on the door of Captain West’s cabin.

“Come in,” the skipper growled.

They entered.

“What took you so long?” Captain West snapped.

“We were delayed,” Sandy said.

“Oh,” the skipper mocked, glancing over at his mate, who sat on the bunk. “Did you hear that, Briggs? They were delayed, he says. Well,” he sneered, his voice turning ugly, “you’ll have plenty of time for delays where I’m putting you.”

The skipper peered at them with eager expectation, as though he hoped his remarks would goad them into losing their tempers. Observing this, Sandy was inwardly pleased. He realized that the skipper could not be too confident of himself, that he was not sure of how much the youths actually knew—no matter what Mr. Briggs had said to him.

“Well?” the skipper roared, crashing his fist down on his desk. “What have you to say to that?”

“Nothing, sir,” Sandy replied evenly.

A red flush began to spread over Captain West’s face. But it was supplanted by a cunning look.

“Playing doggo, eh?” he muttered. “Well, we’ll see.” He looked over at his mate with a grin, and said, “Now, you just tell that story of yours again, Mr. Briggs.”

The mate nodded.

“It was this way, sir,” he started, gazing up at the overhead with an expression of shocked innocence. “Just before suppertime, I happened to be passing the galley and saw these two.” He lowered his eyes and jabbed a dirty thumb in the direction of Sandy and Jerry. Then he raised his eyes again and said, “They were playing catch with a can of tomatoes.”

Jerry gasped in indignation, and Sandy quickly gave him a warning nudge.

“That’s what they were doing, sir—throwing it back and forth like a couple of schoolkids at a picnic. Then this black-haired fellow here, he let go a good one and it went right through the grandstander’s hands and hit the can of fat on the stove and knocked it over on the fire. And then, sir,” the mate concluded, a note of smugness in his voice, “then, sir, the fat was really in the fire.”

With a look of gloating, the captain swung his eyes on Sandy and Jerry—and that was when Sandy opened his mouth and said, “He’s a liar.”

Almost the moment that the words dropped from his lips, Sandy Steele wished he could have bitten his tongue in two. But he had finally had to give in to the resentment that had been smoldering inside him almost from the moment he had walked aboard the _James Kennedy_. But, to say that, after all his good advice to Jerry! He glanced over at his friend, half expecting him to be disgusted with him.

He was grinning!

Then Sandy had to laugh, too—if not from the delight so plain on Jerry’s saucy face, then from the look of injury on the face of the mate. Mr. Briggs actually acted as though he had been unfairly accused! So, Sandy laughed—and when he did, Captain West arose from his chair with a roar of rage.

“Get out of here! You smooth-faced, insubordinate little firebugs! Get back to your quarters and stand by to face a court of inquiry on charges of arson and insubordination! That’ll teach you to laugh at me and call my mate a liar! Eh? How about that, eh? How will your friend, Old Man Kennedy, like that, eh, when he hears that his white-faced schoolboys are headed for some Buffalo jail? And you, Mr. Briggs, I’m ordering you to keep these two under lock and key until we get to Buffalo.” Then, puffing up his chest like a giant bullfrog, Captain West issued a final roar:

“GET OUT!”

Their heads held high, Sandy and Jerry marched back to their quarters.

And the door had hardly swung shut behind them, before the skipper whirled and pounced upon his mate with the low snarl of an enraged puma. With a cry and a whimper, the fawning mate who had opened his mouth for words of toadying praise, cringed back against the bulkhead.

“No, Skipper, don’t,” he whined, but Captain West ignored his pleas and seized him by the shirt collar and began to shake him.

“You lying, sniveling drunk!” the skipper growled. “Do you think you fooled me for a moment? I saw you smash that rum bottle in front of that Steele boy’s face tonight. I smelled your breath when you came reeling down the passageway, shrieking like the lily-livered ninny you are.” He shook Mr. Briggs again, fiercely. “Do you think I believed that cock-and-bull story of yours? Do you? Answer me!”

Terrified, the mate babbled, “N-no, sir.”

“But you still took me for a fool, is that it?” the skipper snarled, almost beside himself. Then, seeing Mr. Briggs burst into a fit of uncontrollable blubbering, he uttered a growl of disgust and flung him back on the bunk like a sack of wheat. He returned to his desk and sat down again.

“Briggs,” he said heavily, “if it wasn’t for the fact that I can make use of you, I’d have skinned you alive long ago. I pretended to believe you tonight only because I saw a chance to put those nosy brats of Kennedy’s in their place. I want them under lock and key until that deal is signed in Buffalo. And that’s the day after tomorrow.” The skipper drew another deep breath. “They belong to you, Briggs,” he said. “And you’ll answer for them with your hide.” His voice took on an ugly, menacing tone that raised bumps of fear all along the mate’s spine.

“If something goes wrong, Briggs, if I see you so much as look at another bottle, I’ll flay that hide of yours from one end of the Lakes to the other. I’ve got too much at stake to fool around! Paul Chadwick wants those Kennedy boats and I want him to get them. If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to be chief captain of the combined Chadwick and Kennedy lines—and no high school kids are going to get in my way by telling Old Man Kennedy about those high-grade ore discoveries. So, remember that, Briggs—and now get out of here and let me get some sleep.”

Still trembling, the shaken mate crept from Captain West’s quarters and closed the door softly behind him. Then he slipped down the passageway toward the tiny cabin occupied by Sandy Steele and Jerry James.

The moment Mr. Briggs vanished from sight, the door of the cabin adjoining the skipper’s came stealthily open. Then, slowly, the figure of a little bald-headed man emerged. He shut the door carefully behind him, and then glanced swiftly up and down the corridor.

On tiptoe, he slipped over to Captain West’s door. He bent his head to listen. Then he backed off carefully and raised both clenched fists to shake them in a gesture of anger and defiance, before he whirled silently and made his way out of sight.

The little bald-headed man was Cookie.

He had heard every word spoken in the captain’s cabin since Sandy and Jerry had made their appearance there. Every inch of his little frame burned with determination to come to the rescue of his young friends and help thwart the schemes of the crafty Captain West.

In their own cabin, meanwhile, the two friends had just climbed wearily into their bunks.

Suddenly they shot erect as they heard a rattling and clanking outside their door. But they knew in the next instant what the noise meant. It was Mr. Briggs “dogging down” the heavy outside handle.

“Well,” Jerry said, “now we’re prisoners.”

“Yes,” Sandy said, “but I have a funny feeling that things are going to start to get better.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Sandy said grimly, “they couldn’t possibly get any worse.”